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He's basically suggesting that you spam shit high the entire game until you average 200.

Then work on keeping your APM up there while simultaneously increasing your eAPM.

its pretty good advice
if you can't have a high APM while doing meaningless actions, how do you expect to have a high APM doing meaningful ones?

learn to walk before run etc etc

i remember when i asked a masters friend of mine what he thought of apm, he answered that it will improve on its own as you play the game more

what are your thoughts? To spam and actively try to improve it?

The problem with "it will improve on its own" is that its not strictly true. It will improve, but like anything, you only improve something if you challenge yourself.

I've heard this sentence (paraphrased a bit obviously) from a lot of newer players, PA and otherwise, who I've spoken to about their learning process.

"Yeah, I like the idea of that strategy, but I think it takes a bit too much APM for what I'm capable of and I'd rather focus on something else until I get better at the game"

The reason this is a bad attitude is that challenging yourself is how you improve.

bad at controlling small numbers of units in early game PvP? Play super aggressive with those units in all your PvPs. You'll lose horribly at first, as hilarious miscontrol costs you your first zealot and stalker, but every game you'll get better and better at it.

bad at stutter micro? play marine-heavy strategies in early game TvZ, where stutter micro is important to victory

bad at landing good storms? go high templar every game until you get better at it

I was reasonable happy with everything right up until the major battle at 16min. Clearly I lost this pretty badly because of positioning but I don't really feel that I had much option beyond storming his front - I am pretty much maxed in terms of supply cap (190/190) so it feels like if I wait around for too long his army will just max out and crush mine.

This is how it goes in quite a lot of my TvP games, I hit supply can and then die to someone who has 40 supply less than me but the same size army. Am I building completely the wrong units or something?

Any input is much appreciated, I can almost taste gold!

Your build order could use some stream lining and your worker production in the early game was a little spotty, but both were much better than your opponent's. You were decently ahead at the 14min mark when you poke the bottom of his ramp. You're up in economy and army and slightly ahead on upgrades, but you're behind on tech because you have no Ghosts or Vikings yet.

The drop was a great idea, and tricked him into moving his army out of position. You took great advantage of it and moved up the ramp he was holding before hand.

Here's where you got into trouble though. You run into his natural and end up trapped between buildings and inside of Forcefields, which prevents your Marines from doing anything while they getting minced.

Protoss love chokes. Their major damage dealers are AoE and Forcefields are much stronger in chokes. You can't fight a Protoss in a choke as long as they have access to AoE or Forcefields and you don't have the counter units to deal them, be it Vikings (or Banshees ) for Colossi or Ghosts for Templar/Sentries.

Thanks for the input. Should I be aiming to get a bunch of Ghosts and Vikings early on then? If so, is there any standard timing for this?

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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular

Thanks for the input. Should I be aiming to get a bunch of Ghosts and Vikings early on then? If so, is there any standard timing for this?

As Terran your tech choices in the midgame are based on what the Protoss chooses. If his midgame tech is Colossus, you get Vikings. If his midgame tech is Templar with Psi Storm, you get ghosts. If he gets neither, you just keep making medivacs, marines, and marauders, and win because he can't do shit without AOE damage of some sort.

catching up to thread
I have entombed valley and shattered temple both downvoted, fuck shattered and it's 2-base play and it's all small and shiat (but it was the best spot to 5RR or 7RR
I agree Shakuras needs to go, it's boring and old and makes lame games in tourneys and ZvZ on it sucks
Metropolis is a stupid fucking map

I didn't care for Dover's map. The visuals were bland, and the textures too busy and non-distinct. You walked through several doors before I was able to identify they were doors. There was not enough visual information regarding the switch puzzle; you can figure it out via brute force eventually, but it's not clear at a glance what you're supposed to be doing and why. I do appreciate the three areas being slightly distinct. However, you then deny the player the payoff of promised weapons, and proceed to an odd jumping/vehicle/box puzzle thing that was completely nonsensical; how is one supposed to innately know that you can shoot the boxes, when they look like any other static wall? Additionally, why use the car for the jump instead of the flying machine?

It's a decent student project, and shows off some great modeling, sound and atmospheric skills, but as far as gameplay design, it was a jumble of random, unexplained elements. You can handwave this away as a student project, yes, but the information design, accessibility, and logic of a game world will have a far longer and stronger reaction on a player than pretty visuals and explosions.

Compare Narbacular Drop to Portal. Once is a cool jumble of level ideas that play with a unique mechanic, the other is a stunning masterpiece of information design and concept training. Those are the skills you want to be improving; those are the skills that make you one of the greats.

Sorry Dover. I hope it doesn't come off as mean as it sounds.

Ouch! >.<

Spoiler:

You make quite a few good points. The models and textures were all UDK and had nothing to do with me. In fact, the only thing I was working on was the level design!

I did deny the player's weapons because the initial build was to have a AI bot battle instead of the hanger/jump area. I wanted the player to have to duck and dodge before getting a weapon and extracting revenge. Due to my inability to grasp AI programming in time, I had to trash the idea. Plus I like it when the player has no weapons. Screw 'em!

You're right about the brute force on the puzzle. I hate flying cameras revealing clues and shit, way to hand holding for me. Sadly, this was the result of several non-gamers playtesting it and observing how they perceived the puzzle. You should have seen the lights and stuff before this version. Also, because I needed the player to see the gate explode, I had to force them to come out that door way so to see the event. Definitely could have been done better though.

As for the end, there was no way out of the area with the hovercraft without blowing up the boxes. There's also a "press mouse button to fire" prompt. I also made it so that you couldn't fit the ship into the hallway, so the player was forced into trying something else. The buggy was visible through the stairs and bathed in yellow to make it stand out amongst the blue backdrop. Being a nice guy, I removed the "self-destruct" timer I was thinking about adding in the end.

In any event, I told my classmates and professor that this would be something I'd hand off to artists, animators, and designers to tweak into a full, final level. Again, I'm not into level design as much as managing or mechanics.

I don't spam intentionally, I just do it as a way of calming nerves earlygame. The main thing I found that helped my mechanics was simply to have a checklist of things to be rotating through and constantly doing them, like checking injects, checking upgrades, spending larva, and knowing the correct micro to do when in a fight - trying to get surrounds with lings, focusing medevacs and tanks with mutas for example. The biggest thing though, was forcing myself to be fast enough for ling/bling wars in ZvZ.

After that, its just a matter of practice. It really does help to watch pros stream though.

Naturally my APM went up from around 60ish to 130-150, with about 20% redundancy.

I don't spam and hit APM between 70-80. I am facing a dilemma where I don't really find it enjoyable to play fast (usually playing after a long day of work, and it gives me a headache).

Basically I'm in a phase where I'm not sure how hard I want to be working at something during my leisure time. This week I've solved that by playing Borderlands instead of Starcraft (save for one game against Meeks Saturday night). The quest for Masters is on hold.

I'm sure I'll get more out of this as I continue to get better, but the "Macro Benchmarking" spoiler alone was worth the time to read the whole thing. Thanks very much for linking this, I wouldn't have found it otherwise.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I used to be a performing classical guitarist so the thought of just fucking spamming like crazy to start with actually kinda appeals to me.

This is what I've done for the last two years. And my APM has gone up significantly since the beta.

(I am also a former guitarist.)

i can't remember if it was simon or tanner, but basically, they told me that my apm would go up when i started finding more things to do (and there are always more things to do). past year, i've went from 20'ish->110'ish.

and there's still more shit to do. more creep to spread, more OLs to maphack with, more balancing of drones, more injects to hit. and then there's that whole "micro" thing that people don't seem to talk about.